Fooling around with ways to escape Mordenkainen's Distjunction

[Melcar]

Yeah... I know, this have been up here before, but I still wanted to share my thoughts and ideas on this... Usually this place is a good start, when thinking one have found a loophole, or gotten a great idea... So without further bla bla....

I was thinking that Contingency could be used to set up a condition that reads: "When ever a disjunktion effect are within 5 ft of you, immediately cast lesser celerity?" Or: "When ever a disjunktion effect are within 5 ft of you, immediately cast dimension door?"

I was thinking that this could be a viable condition, since falling 4 ft. could be one. So if the spell can measure falling 4 ft, it might be able to measure distance to a disjunction effect?

What do you guys think... ?

[Story]

By the time the Disjunction effect occurs, your Contingency is already gone.

[Forrestfire]

That is definitely an issue, yeah. My preferred approach is to respond with a Wings of Cover, since it blocks line of effect, and Disjunction is a burst.

[Chronos]

You need to respond to the casting, not to the effect. Which depends on having some way of detecting and recognizing the casting.

[Svata]

IotSV can stop it with either a Indigo or Violet Veil.

[Curmudgeon]

This is a nasty spell. As someone who plays Rogues (equipped with very many magic items, but with low Will saves), one casting can stop the game for literally hours. It's necessary to look up the saves of every single item, because some of them will have better saves than the character carrying them.

There's a lot of DM adjudication needed with Mordenkainen's Disjunction:

• Are magical effects dispelled before or after magical items are checked?
• In what order are objects affected? If people are carrying around minor cursed artifacts, this matters quite a bit.
• What happens to the contents of magical containers? Most containers will provide complete cover and block line of effect. We know what happens when a Bag of Holding is pierced, but not what happens when its magic is dispelled.

If your DM says de-magicked container contents are simply dumped on the ground, you'll be out the cost of a Heward's Handy Haversack and maybe a Bag of Holding, but all the magical gear stored in those containers will still be good. Sew all your magical necklaces and bracelets in heavy cloth before putting them on so they'll have total cover; the 1 HP from half an inch of cloth will have to be sundered before they could be vulnerable to burst spells like Mordenkainen's Disjunction.

[Story]

IMO the best solution is to get an agreement with the DM to ban Disjunction. Or at least houserule it into something more reasonable.

[DeAnno]

The frustrating part is the buff-stripping aspect is mostly positive for balance, so banning it altogether (due to the destructive item aspect) can be problematic.

[Rubik]

There are plenty of ways to defend against Disjunction.

You can also use devices (Ravenloft: Legacy of Blood) instead of magic items. They're completely nonmagical versions of magic items, but they require batteries that are quite expensive and have limited charges (or batteries which recharge from your own body's energies, but are dangerous and even more expensive) and are quite fragile. Of course, the charges last for the duration of the magical effect, so a wand device's charge would last long enough to cast a (nonmagical) spell, while a headband of Int would last until you removed it.

Devices are undispellable and nonDisjunctionable.

[sleepyphoenixx]

If you have ranks in spellcraft a Ring of Spell Battle is pretty much foolproof defense. Just redirect it somewhere else where it doesn't destroy anything important.
Battlemagic Perception is also an option, as is using Celerity/Anticipatory Strike and throwing up a Wall of Stone, AMF or other LoE blocker.

[Vaz]

Locate a character able to cast/manifest Teleport Through Time.

Have it locate Mordenkainen's place of birth.

Kill him as a baby.

Congratulations, there is no MDJ on you any more because it didn't exist.

[Piggy Knowles]

For those who suggest banning MDJ: how do you as a player effectively deal with high level casters and dragons without it? I consider it a more or less essential tool in a high level party's arsenal. DMs shouldn't mis-use it, of course, and shouldn't spam it anymore than they should be spamming Shivering Touches or similar game-disrupting spells, and they will need to keep a careful eye on WBL to make sure they are compensating for disjointed items, but I've never been a fan of banning the spell entirely.

As for defenses... If you have a speaking familiar and you are trained in Spellcraft, have your familiar ready an action each round to speak the command word on a shrunken item (a cone hat is the usual suggestion) when someone tries to cast MDJ. The readied action will resolve before the disjunction and the shrunken item will unshrink and block it, as MDJ is a burst.

[Rubik]

I prefer Chained Greater Dispels, myself.

Of course, I also like to use Supernatural Transformation (Psionics) to avoid being Dispelled, myself.

[sleepyphoenixx]

For those who suggest banning MDJ: how do you as a player effectively deal with high level casters and dragons without it? I consider it a more or less essential tool in a high level party's arsenal. DMs shouldn't mis-use it, of course, and shouldn't spam it anymore than they should be spamming Shivering Touches or similar game-disrupting spells, and they will need to keep a careful eye on WBL to make sure they are compensating for disjointed items, but I've never been a fan of banning the spell entirely.

Greater Dispel is usually enough when you improve on it with stuff like Spellcaster's Bane, Inquisition domain and a Dispelling Chord. For higher OP games with various CL boosts i usually try to get Reserves of Strength.
We don't ban MDJ though; i just don't like to use it because of the loot destruction. It's just another thing you need to protect yourself from at high level. It's not like it's impossible.

Going into a fight against a spellcaster with 9th level spells without a plan to deal with disjunction is like not getting Death Ward, FoM, Mind Blank or similar protections. It's your own fault if you get hit with it.

As for defenses... If you have a speaking familiar and you are trained in Spellcraft, have your familiar ready an action each round to speak the command word on a shrunken item (a cone hat is the usual suggestion) when someone tries to cast MDJ. The readied action will resolve before the disjunction and the shrunken item will unshrink and block it, as MDJ is a burst.

I'd rather get Celerity, Anticipatory Strike, Wings of Cover or something similar to protect myself instead of wasting my familiars actions on waiting for something that specific to occur.
Everybody should be able to get enough UMD to reliably activate a wand at level 17. It's a relatively minor investment at that level and invaluably useful.

[Piggy Knowles]

Except that dispelling allows for dispel checks that can fail, requires targeting (making it useless when you don't have LoS), and only suppresses magic items for a short time even on a success - the enemy might regain use of their magical doo-dads as early as the next round.

Disjunction has its flaws, but it is FAR more reliable than chained dispels when dealing with dangerous enemies.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Except that dispelling allows for dispel checks that can fail, requires targeting (making it useless when you don't have LoS), and only suppresses magic items for a short time even on a success - the enemy might regain use of their magical doo-dads as early as the next round.

Disjunction has its flaws, but it is FAR more reliable than chained dispels when dealing with dangerous enemies.

Not destroying their magic items is kind of the point - i want to loot that stuff after its current owners are disposed of.
In general dispelling is reliable enough for me to accept the risk of failing. MDJ's costs aren't worth it against enemies wearing magic items and most monsters don't have a high enough CL to really be a problem.

[Piggy Knowles]

Most high-level games I've been a part of are games I DM'd, and I try not to punish players for using tactics like sundering and Disjunction - I try to keep their WBL in the right place even if they destroyed their expected source of treasure. That said, I know many DMs don't do this, so YMMV. I also don't allow the Reserves of Strength feat, so Dispel and its greater cousin are capped at their respective limits.

In any case, I've never said that Disjunction was always the best option, just that it makes facing high level spellcasters (and dragons in particular) much easier. I know that I've pitted parties against BBEGs that would have been close to impossible to beat with their buffstacks up; using a chained dispel would have meant the party's victory would have more or less come down to how lucky they were on their dispel checks, while the fact that they had access to Disjunction meant it was a tough but manageable fight. I guess if MDJ was banned I'd probably have toned down the foes to compensate, but it's nice being able to go all out.

[Slithery D]

If you're the DM, just decide to use the Pathfinder version of disjunction. Magic items that fail are only suppressed for 1 min/CL. You can permanently destroy a magic item only if you focus on it exclusively.

[AnonymousPepper]

Elminster's Effulgent Epuration *can* work, and it's a spell that anybody who can gain access to a free Persist Spell should persist all day every day, so it's a reasonable solution to this problem. If the caster targets you with it, instead of an area next to you, it will block the effect on you - at least the way I read it. This will probably only work once against the same person, but that one round will give you the chance to teleport or plane shift out without losing all your contingencies.

A more effective solution would be a Contingent Disjunction, set with a contingency such as "Counterspell any Disjunction that would catch me in its area of effect and is not stopped by any other defenses I have." Because contingencies going off are immediate, and as it's been beautifully put, immediate actions take place "any time, yes even then."

[Rubik]

Elminster's Effulgent Epuration *can* work, and it's a spell that anybody who can gain access to a free Persist Spell should persist all day every day, so it's a reasonable solution to this problem. If the caster targets you with it, instead of an area next to you, it will block the effect on you - at least the way I read it. This will probably only work once against the same person, but that one round will give you the chance to teleport or plane shift out without losing all your contingencies.

I'm fairly sure Disjunction is an AoE spell, not a targeted one, so EEE wouldn't work.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Selective Spell + Persistent Spell + Antimagic Field, using alternate metamagic cost abilities of course. Have more than one active if you think you'll need it.

Selective Spell makes it so you're personally unaffected by the spell and can completely ignore it, but everyone else still treats you as being in the AMF when targeting and resolving their spells and abilities. Methods that leave holes in the AMF such as Mastery of Shaping and Extraordinary Spell Aim don't actually work, since the Rules Compendium clarified that an AMF doesn't block line of effect for spells.

Disjunction only has a 1% per caster level chance of destroying an AMF. If it is destroyed then the caster it was protecting is hit as well, but if you have two or more AMFs active there's a separate check for each and thus a lower chance that you'll be hit by it. You could have a contingency to teleport you away if one or more of your AMFs is destroyed, since you don't really want to stick around if something is throwing disjunctions at you.

By the time you're facing disjunction (unless your DM is evil enough to use an Adamantine Clockwork Horror) you should be using Astral Projection to safely adventure anyway. In that case the worst a disjunction can do is possibly disjoin the copies of your magic items that the spell created, and end the Astral Projection spell itself (which makes those copies of items go away anyway).

[AnonymousPepper]

I'm fairly sure Disjunction is an AoE spell, not a targeted one, so EEE wouldn't work.

I acknowledge that, but it'd be important to make the distinction when using it as to where you're targeting it. If one of your PCs says "I cast Disjunction at the Red Wizard," rather than "I cast Disjunction at this point, catching the Red Wizard in it," and he has EEE up, the emanation will hit him and then burst around him, no? I'd say that'd get blocked on him. It's akin to the difference between shooting a rocket directly at somebody and shooting it at their feet in TF2.

The appropriate DM response to the PC saying that of course is to confirm, "You cast it at the Red Wizard?" and if the PC says yes then it gets blocked.

It's the sort of thing that will only work once, but it would work, imo. At least as I picture/read it anyway. It's a bit of a semantics thing, but my perspective is that it's an important one.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

I acknowledge that, but it'd be important to make the distinction when using it as to where you're targeting it. If one of your PCs says "I cast Disjunction at the Red Wizard," rather than "I cast Disjunction at this point, catching the Red Wizard in it," and he has EEE up, the emanation will hit him and then burst around him, no? I'd say that'd get blocked on him. It's akin to the difference between shooting a rocket directly at somebody and shooting it at their feet in TF2.

The appropriate DM response to the PC saying that of course is to confirm, "You cast it at the Red Wizard?" and if the PC says yes then it gets blocked.

It's the sort of thing that will only work once, but it would work, imo. At least as I picture/read it anyway. It's a bit of a semantics thing, but my perspective is that it's an important one.

It doesn't matter how you word where you're targeting it. EEE states, "...that directly targets the subject." Disjunction is not capable of directly targeting a single creature, it can only target an area, so EEE will never be able to block it, even if the center of the Disjunction is targeted on the subject's space.

[AnonymousPepper]

By the time you're facing disjunction (unless your DM is evil enough to use an Adamantine Clockwork Horror) you should be using Astral Projection to safely adventure anyway. In that case the worst a disjunction can do is possibly disjoin the copies of your magic items that the spell created, and end the Astral Projection spell itself (which makes those copies of items go away anyway).

In regards to AP, and sorry for the double post, I don't think it's necessarily all that safe. If your Wizard has made a sufficiently powerful enemy - and what high level caster hasn't - it's not at all unfeasible for another Wizard to start making deals with the Githyanki, who can very easily be bought with information about Githzerai or Mind Flayer enclaves; such a character would easily know all of the relevant information, probably even with nat1s on Knowledge Planes/Dungeoneering/Arcana/etc. I see it as a likely scenario that such an opponent would approach the Githyanki with such information in exchange for cutting a single silver thread, and suddenly Astral Projection no longer seems particularly safe.

[AnonymousPepper]

It doesn't matter how you word where you're targeting it. EEE states, "...that directly targets the subject." Disjunction is not capable of directly targeting a single creature, it can only target an area, so EEE will never be able to block it, even if the center of the Disjunction is targeted on the subject's space.

I see your point. It does boil down to semantics, but I think you may be right. *shrug* I've been wrong before.

[Chronos]

A more effective solution would be a Contingent Disjunction, set with a contingency such as "Counterspell any Disjunction that would catch me in its area of effect and is not stopped by any other defenses I have."

You can't do this with the Contingency spell, since the spell stored by it must target you. I believe you could do it with Craft Contingent Spell, however.

[Rubik]

I see your point. It does boil down to semantics, but I think you may be right. *shrug* I've been wrong before.

Well, "targeting" has a defined definition. Generally, when the game defines a term, you use that definition any time the term is mentioned.

[AnonymousPepper]

You can't do this with the Contingency spell, since the spell stored by it must target you. I believe you could do it with Craft Contingent Spell, however.

...people actually use Contingency instead of Craft Contingent Spell?

Yeah, I was referring to the latter. And of course CCS is the foundation of the high-level Wizard's total inability to be killed. Died? Contingent Revivify sets off Contingent Greater Plane Shift to your home demiplane sets off Contingent Cure Light Wounds (or a sor/wiz alternative, if CLW is unavailable). Got Wished off your demiplane into a dead magic plane/zone? Contingent Invoke Magic Dismissal (the fourth-level divine version; intentionally fail the save) into Contingent Greater Plane Shift. So on and so forth.

In this case - got Disjoined? No you didn't, Contingent Disjunction to counterspell.

[Melcar]

All very interesting ideas. I was particular fan of the Craft contingency spell. But was at the same time unsure of how a wizard would get either Wings of Cover or cleric spell into that feat?

[Svata]

Gold to pay for a sorcerer to cast it into the item during crafting, or to buy it from the market. Or just have an artificer minion cohort party member.